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Whether you're new to OCR, or already offer our qualifications, you might find our admin overview useful. This outlines the main administration processes for our verified qualifications, and will guide you to the relevant, detailed information on our website.

1. Get approved

As part of the application, you'll need to provide us with evidence that you meet the approval criteria. You’ll need separate approval for each qualification you want to offer, and we will need to make an approval visit for each one. We'll contact you to arrange this.

2. Make entries

You’ll you need to register your students by making entries via Interchange. These provide us with details of each student and the qualification they are taking. You can enter students for either the full award or individual units (but not both). There are no entry deadlines.

Once you've made your entries, we will allocate an external quality assurer to your centre. They will contact you directly to arrange the quality assurance (QA) visits.

3. Carry out assessment and make claims

Candidate work is assessed, standardised and quality assured by internal assessors and Internal Quality Assurance (IQA) personnel at your centre. Assessment can take place at any time and there is no time limit.

Once the assessment has taken place, you can make a claim for unit or full awards via Interchange. See the guide for more details.

When you have delivered a verified qualification for approximately 12 months, you may be eligible for direct claim status (DCS), allowing you to claim your candidates’ achievements in between external verifier visits. See the direct claim status page for more information.

4. Prepare for quality assurance visit

For each qualification, an OCR external quality assurer (EQA) will need to visit your centre twice a year to sample students’ work and make sure you are delivering the qualifications to the appropriate standards.

Your allocated EQA will contact you to arrange mutually convenient dates for the QA visits. You will need to make sure that the candidates, your assessment staff and the requested samples of work are available at the QA visit.

If the centre meets the appropriate criteria, the EQA may recommend you for direct claim status.

6. Receive certificates

We’ll issue certificates five working days after the results are published.

Unit certificates will be issued once a candidate has achieved a unit. When the candidate has achieved the number of units required for the whole qualification, the overall certificate will be automatically issued.